How Hillary gets the press coverage she wants

[TitanTiger 20,460]

Interesting story from Gawker about the strongarming behind the scenes Hillary/her staff does to get favorable coverage in the press. One example came from a FOIA request that turned up some e-mail exchanges from 2009 between Philippe Reines, Hillary’s press secretary, and then-Atlantic editor Marc Ambinder. Ambinder had asked Reines for an advance copy of a speech Hillary was about to give at the Council on Foreign Relations. Reines' response:

From: [Philippe Reines]

Sent: Wednesday, July 15 2009 10:06 AM

To: Ambinder, Marc

Subject: Re: Do you have a copy of HRC's speech to share?

3 [conditions] actually

1) You in your own voice describe them as "muscular"

2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys - from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross - will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something

3) You don't say you were blackmailed!

And as Gawker goes on to point out, Ambinder did exactly as he was instructed to get the advance copy. And that's not all that turned up:

The same [FOIA] request previously revealed that Politico's chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen, promised to deliver positive coverage of Chelsea Clinton, and, in a separate exchange, permitted Reines to ghost-write an item about the State Department for Politico's Playbook newsletter. Ambinder's emails with Reines demonstrate the same kind of transactional reporting, albeit to a much more legible degree: In them, you can see Reines "blackmailing" Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as "muscular" in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton's own staff.

Read the whole thing here.

Not saying that this doesn't happen on both sides of the aisle, but rarely do we get to see the machinations that really go on, or know whether the reporters claiming to be objective journalists cave or not.

[cooltigger21 0]

It's not doing her a whole lot of good. This is 2008 the sequel.

[AU_Tiger_88 417]

this is clinton 101 and has been happening since Bill ran...